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Breakfast of Champions: Starting the Day Off Right

As a commenter was kind enough to point out, yesterday was this blog's birthday. To be honest, I never would have realized that myself, owing to my increasing inability to manage or keep track of time. Also, I believe birthdays are a "Hallmark holiday" and a construct of the greeting card industry, a business concern which has done more to harm this planet than big oil, big tobacco, and the music of Big Country combined. How many rainforests need to be raped so that a great aunt can mail some brat five dollars? And don't think you're off the hook just because you opted for the e-card, because every time you send one a greeting card company employee clubs a baby seal to death with another baby seal.

Still, I'd like to pause for a moment to bask in my success, only I can't, because the truth is I'm not successful. In fact, ever since starting this blog 15 years ago, my life has gone downhill more wildly than a fixie hillbomber with a broken chain. Before becoming a bike blogger, I was the CEO of a large investment bank, making tens of millions of dollars a year in salary, bonuses, and other forms of compensation (which is financial industry jargon for "hookers"). Now, I have a shitty government job as the Secretary of the Treasury which only pays a measly six figures, and instead of replacing my Ultra-Red Record Ace Electronic shifters after every ride I'm forced to use the same pair for up to two weeks.

I've still never worn a pair of Rapha shorts more than once, though. At those cheap prices I still consider them "one use only," like tissues or tampons.

"Seizing your mornings is the equivalent of that sound financial advice to pay yourself before you pay your bills. If you wait until the end of the month to save what you have left, there will be nothing left over. Likewise, if you wait until the end of the day to do meaningful but not urgent things like exercise, pray, read, ponder how to advance your career or grow your organization, or truly give your family your best, it probably won’t happen," Vanderkam writes. "If it has to happen, then it has to happen first," she says.

Unfortunately though, I'm unable to pray, since my religion (Orthodox Lobsterism) forbids it. "Praying is for losers," it clearly states on the public restroom wall upon which is scrawled our sacred texts and commandments. Also, I'm not convinced that cramming in a bunch of activities first thing in the morning is a formula for success. Actually, it sounds more like a formula for constipation. Whatever happened to pouring a cup of coffee, switching on the TV, and then adjourning to the "porcelain library" for some quality "downloading" time? Then again, I suppose there might be a direct relationship between success and constipation, which would certainly go a long way towards explaining Mitt Romney.

Of course, while I may be a failure, things could be worse. For example, I could be a middle-aged IT guy who wears a helmet cam, chases a bunch of idiots half his age, and then hawks the footage on the Internet, like Lucas Brunelle:

Though in all fairness I suppose idiots chasing other idiots is the basis of pretty much every form of "competitive" cycling, from the Tour de France on down. In fact, idiots are so compelled to chase other idiots that they need to do it even when they're alone, which is why they invented Strava. I suppose I could blame Strava for this, but it wouldn't be fair, since they're just fulfilling a desire that's already there. It would be like blaming the Jergens people for masturbation. Anyway, congratulations to Lucas Brunelle for emptying the "spank bank" of idiot porn he collected during his vacation days, and I'm sure this will appeal to the sorts of viewers who find "Premium Rush" too intellectually challenging.

As someone who finds the subject incredibly tedious, I react to these news stories like I do when I hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers have put out a new album--that is to say with a combination of total disinterest and utter disbelief that anybody is still paying attention. I also think it's especially absurd that he's now been banned from triathlon, a sport which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with cycling:

Just let the guy dork out during his golden years. Seriously, they might as well ban him from backgammon.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised the sport of cycling is still fixated on Armstrong though, because, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. (This explains why triathletes change outfits like three times during a race, yet they still can't ride bikes.) For example, way back when I started this blog, if you had asked me my predictions for 2012, I'd have said that by then I'd be living in Portland and running a bicycle-based business. In fact, I even drew up a business plan for a company called "Hold Your Line," which would dispatch trained specialists to your home by bicycle to wait on the phone for you when you get put on hold, thus freeing you to do other things. Unfortunately, it turned out that people don't actually have other things to do in Portland, since it's not a real city, and so they're perfectly happy to do all the holding themselves.

So alas, I'm still here in Brooklyn, and despite my best efforts I'm still periodically losing my temper. For example, yesterday evening I yelled at a Hasidic minivan driver to shut up. This was because he was honking at every cyclist he passed, as well as at every car in front of him the instant the light turned green. Anyway, I feel bad about yelling, but his driving was rather vexing--it was like someone running around a supermarket and yelling, "Move, move!" Generally speaking, I find that the more religious a driver is, the more inconsiderate he or she is--and this is true regardless of whether the bumper features a picture of Menachem Schneerson, or a Jesus fish, or any similar totem. I'm not sure why this is--and don't tell me it's because religious people are complete hypocrites, because I refuse to believe that, for at no point in history has that hypothesis ever been borne out.

As I was riding my mountain bike on Monday afternoon you were coming down on the left side with some tiny tiny shorts... You are white (I think), super sexy and curvy body, and those shorts... my lord, tiny that when I looked back I almost crashed lol... I raced to go around the bike trail and could not find you to at least say hi. I hope to bump into you again... You are definitely a woman to draw attention and I love that!!!! I will keep riding with hopes to learn about you. I am probably the ONLY guy that rides with smoked up Livestrong glasses, and I have a black TREK mountain bike.

If it's you, hit me up... gonna be great to learn about each other.

I wasn't sure what "smoked up Livestrong glasses" were, so I plugged the term into a popular search engine, but the closest thing I found was a recipe on the LiveStrong website for how to make a smoked ham. Nevertheless, this raises an interesting question: Would you rather be stalked by a guy in smoked up LiveStrong glasses, or by a guy with a shaved head, goatee, mustache, and a bright red velvet smoking jacket? Well, chances are that if you have a Kurt Vonnegut tattoo you'd opt for the latter: